The present invention generally relates to processing of online social network data, and more particularly, to a method and system for managing multimedia content appearing on user pages of an online social network.
Over the past several years, the amount of multimedia content available online has increased dramatically. With access to cheap storage and higher bandwidths, photo sharing sites and video sharing sites have become widely used. Sharing personal photos with families and friends through one of these photo sharing sites is now commonplace. The explosion in video sharing is not so much attributable to the sharing of personal video created by the user but the sharing of video created by another person that the user finds particularly funny, interesting or informative.
Video sharing is often done through e-mail. Typically, after viewing a video, the user inputs e-mail addresses of those persons with whom the user would like to share the video. In response, the video sharing site sends an e-mail to such persons with a hyperlink to the video. The person receiving the e-mail can access the hyperlink to view the video and share the video with other persons in the same manner. Video viewership can increase very rapidly in this manner.
A less intrusive way of sharing video is through a profile or landing page a user maintains at an online social network. When a user finds a video that is particularly funny, interesting or informative, the user features that video on his or her landing page at the online social network. As people visit the user's landing page at the online social network, they can watch the video from the user's landing page although the actual video feed is from a third party source.
As more and more users at online social networks feature videos and other multimedia content on their landing pages, the task of managing them has become a challenge to online social networks. One major reason for the difficulty in managing such multimedia content is that much of it are not stored locally by the online social networks but are streamed from servers that host the multimedia content when they are accessed for viewing.
Introduction
The present invention provides a method and system for managing multimedia content that appear on various user pages of an online social network. According to embodiments of the present invention, when multimedia content from a third party source is selected by a user to be featured on his or her profile or landing page, source ID and content ID corresponding to the featured multimedia content are stored locally in a database managed by the online social network, and an embed code for accessing the featured multimedia content is generated using the source ID and the content ID. The source ID is an identifier of the third party source of the multimedia content and is associated with a configuration file that is used in generating the embed code. The content ID is an identifier for the multimedia content used by the third party source and is used as an input parameter when generating the embed code with the configuration file.
By managing multimedia content in accordance with embodiments of the present invention, greater control can be exercised by the online social network over the multimedia content that are featured in the landing pages of its users. For example, inappropriate content can be filtered easily by searching for the source ID and content ID corresponding to the inappropriate content and flagging them so that the embed code for such content will not be generated. Blocking an entire site is even easier. It just requires a change to the configuration file corresponding to that site so that a web page displaying a message such as “Access to the URL ****.com is not permitted.” can be generated in place of the embed code. As another example, invalid links that are caused by URL changes implemented by the source of the multimedia content can be fixed easily by making the appropriate correction to such source's configuration file. After the correction is made to the configuration file, all embed codes generated using this configuration, file will have the correct URL.
A first embodiment of the present invention is directed to a method for generating a web page, e.g., a landing page of a user of an online social network, that includes a multimedia section in which multimedia content from a third party source can be displayed. The method includes the steps of receiving a user selection of multimedia content of a third party source that is to be added to the multimedia section, storing a source ID associated with the third party source, storing a content ID associated with the multimedia content, generating an embed code for the multimedia content using the source ID and the content ID, and generating the web page including the multimedia section using the embed code. The embed code may be generated by executing a configuration file associated with the source ID, wherein the configuration file specifies the format of the embed code and the location of the third party source (e.g., its URL) associated with the source ID.
A second embodiment of the present invention is directed to a method for generating a web page for a user of the online social network, e.g., the user's landing page, based on third party multimedia content aggregated by other users of the online social network. The method includes the steps of retrieving source IDs and content IDs of multimedia content aggregated by other users of the online social network, selecting at least one multimedia content aggregated by the other users of the online social network, generating an embed code for the selected multimedia content using its source ID and the content ID, and generating the web page using the embed code. The embed code may be generated by executing a configuration file associated with the source ID, wherein the configuration file specifies the format of the embed code and the location of the third party source associated with the source ID. The multimedia content may be selected based on its popularity with other users of the online social network who are related to the user of the online social network by N degrees of separation or less.
A third embodiment of the present invention is directed to a web server computer for an online social network. The web server computer includes a local database that stores content for a plurality of users of the online social network, the content for each of the users including profile information and pointers to third party multimedia content, and a processing unit that is programmed to generate a landing page for each of the users with the profile information and at least one pointer to third party multimedia content. Each of the pointers to third party multimedia content includes a source ID associated with a source of the third party multimedia content and a content ID associated with the third party multimedia content, and the landing page includes an embed code for the third party multimedia content that is generated using the source ID and the content ID.